Vital statistics

“ Vital Statistics is the science of numbers applied to the life-history of communities. Its significance is similar to that of the more recently coined word—Demography—though the latter does not necessarily confine itself strictly to study of life by statistical means. ”

“ It must be remembered that vital statistics, showing the decrease of a given disease within the past forty or fifty years, probably represent not merely a real decrease of the amount indicated by the figures but an even greater one in fact; because each succeeding decade, as our knowledge of disease and the perfection of our statistical machinery improves and increases, is sure to show a prompter recognition and a more thorough and complete reporting of all cases of the disease occurring. ”

“ Every one who is engaged in statistical inquiry must acknowledge the possibility of natural laws governing such statistical facts. Hence we must allot a distinct place to numerical information relating to the numbers, ages, physical and sanitary condition, mortality, &c., of different peoples, in short, to vital statistics. ”

“ THE operations of benefit societies ought to provide a fruitful field for investigation by the student of vital statistics. These organizations, embracing a very large membership, deal practically with the accidents of sickness and of death, and can be made to supply valuable data. ”

“ An accurate statement of population forms the natural basis of all vital statistics. Thus the comparison of the number of deaths in one with the number of deaths in a second community has no significance unless we know also the number living out of which these deaths occurred. Even then our knowledge would be defective, without further particulars as to the proportion in each population living at different ages, and the number dying at the corresponding ages. ”

“ Data have now been gathered in regard to the families of the men of science previously selected. In our present state of ignorance a statistical study of any homogeneous and objectively chosen group should be of value, both as a contribution to psychological and vital statistics in general and for comparison with other groups which may be similarly studied. ”

“ Such statistics while convenient and fashionable, and assuredly not without interest, have a purely quantitative basis—such is the way of statistics—and of themselves do not reveal a vital cultural development. ”

“ Farr, personally, as a vital statistician that invested with so much confidence the registrar-general's statistics, which shed so clear a light upon the black figures of our urban mortality statistics, and thus strengthened the hands of other workers in the field of sanitary reform. ”

“ Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the field for estimate in statistics of the kind proposed is limited; it only embraces figures for which exact totals are unobtainable, for instance, area, population, and figures of societies which refuse to give statistics, etc., and in every case precision in these statistics is not of vital importance. ”

“ The most serviceable single source-book is the annual volume, Statistical Abstract of the United States, first issued in 1878, published by the Department of Commerce. This assembles data on area and population, including census returns, immigration, and vital statistics; education and school statistics; agriculture, forestry and fisheries; manufactures and mines; occupations, labour, and wages; internal communication and transportation; merchant marine and shipping; foreign commerce; consumption estimates; prices; money, banking, and insurance; public finance and national wealth ”

“ No inquiry can assume a scientific form unless it has a numerical basis to work upon, and therefore it behooves us to note the starting-point of such a basis in hygiene, if we can find it. This we do find in the collection of statistics, a beginning of which was made a long time ago in the bills of mortality kept in this country. We know how imperfect those were, and how even the population of this country was not correctly known until within the lifetime of men still living. ”

“ In this manner statistics of mortality assume vast importance, and present for our consideration manifold questions of a physical, social, and political character. They determine the laws which regulate the duration of life; they indicate in what manner those laws have been or are being infringed, and afford bases for calculations materially affecting the interests of mankind. Statistics are far from being the barren array of figures ingeniously and laboriously combined into columns and tables, which some persons are apt to consider them. ”

“ The masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects only: first as the copies of great men, printed on bad paper from worn-out plates, next as a contrast to the great men, and lastly as their tools: for the rest, let the devil and statistics fly away with them! How could statistics prove that there are laws in history? ”

“ If, therefore, it be profoundly interesting to contemplate, arrange, and study the multitude of agencies which impel this innumerable caravan of pilgrims toward their destination, it is almost equally instructive to analyze the manifold causes which have contributed to their assembling together. Such particulars, when massed into statistics, become of acknowledged importance to medical and social science. ”

“ But what about the statistics? Can they answer the question, how many empty stomachs, useless teeth? how many people whose eyes are drawn out of their sockets as with pincers at the sight of a piece of dry bread? how many people who have really died of hunger?
All you gain by statistics is that you find out about an unlicensed public-house, or a horse-thief, or a receiver of stolen goods.
Scientific medicine has invented a machine for checking heart-beats, one by one; the foolish statistics play with figures. ”

“ The statistician is primarily the man of facts, not merely a recorder of facts, but one upon whom is laid the duty of their orderly arrangement, their exposition and scientific coordination. Our author inferentially recognizes these functions by mapping out a general work to bear the title of the science of the statistics. Herein will be arranged the principal contents of statistical knowledge, in two separate volumes, the one having particular reference to the needs of sociology, the other of economics. ”

“ The development of statistics is causing history to be rewritten. Till recently the historian studied nations in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges, and battles. Of the people themselves—the great social body with life, growth, sources, elements, and laws of its own—he told us nothing. Now statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where human nature displays its weakness and its strength. ”

“ A central and common task for us as research investigators is to decipher what our data are able to say about the problems we are trying to solve. Statistics is a language constructed to assist this process, with probability as its grammar. While rudimentary conversations are possible without good command of the language (and are conducted routinely) , principled statistical analysis is critical in grappling with many subtle phenomena to ensure that nothing serious will be lost in translation and to increase the likelihood that your research findings will stand the test of time. ”

“ We have statistics of prosperity, of the accumulation and distribution of wealth, of the expansion and contraction of credit, and of business failures. We have statistics of longevity. We ascertain improving sanitary conditions by changes in the death rate. We learn by statistical methods of the increase or decrease of accident and death due to public disorder or maladministration. We ascertain through educational statistics the decrease of illiteracy and superstition. ”

“ Only a large sample size makes it likely that our sample is close to representative of the population. For this reason, inferential statistics take into account the sample size when generalizing results from samples to populations. ”

“ By reducing the facts to figures comparisons can easily be made and the proportion of one thing to another is more accurately presented. By divesting facts from their aspect in daily life and the caprices of temperament, a truer estimate of tendencies can be made. Because statistics generally deal with large [Pg 582] masses or great numbers, standards, ratios, and types can easily be established. The mortality statistics of insurance companies afford a good example of general averages or ratios that hold true when applied to such an uncertain proposition as the length of human life. ”

“ He uses the results of statistical inquiry because the method of obtaining and presenting them is scientific, and because he recognizes with the German Schlosser, that "statistics is history ever advancing," and that if he wishes to grow with advancing history and keep himself fully and thoroughly informed of progress in every direction, he must use the statistical or historical method ”

“ All that is necessary to make the examples appropriate is that we should admit that in their case statistical data are our ultimate appeal in the present state of knowledge. Of course if the empirical laws can be resolved into their component causes we may appeal to direct deduction, and in this case the employment of statistics, and consequently the use of the theory of Probability, may be superseded. ”

“ Every article on statistics requires at least one caveat. Here is ours: we refer in this article to “science” as a convenient shorthand for investigations using data to study questions of interest. This includes social science, engineering, digital humanities, finance, and so on. Statisticians are not shy about reminding administrators that statistical science has an impact on nearly every part of almost all organizations. ”

“ Since this century set in, however, statistics have risen to the dignity of a science, and the truly valuable information they afford, the floods of light they have shed on all social matters, the service they have lent to medical science, to hygiene, to sanitary reforms, and above all to the prevalence of crime with its grades and surroundings, fully attest the sufficiency of its title. ”

“ We developed our list of rules with researchers in mind: researchers having some knowledge of statistics, possibly with one or more statisticians available in their building, or possibly with a healthy do-it-yourself attitude and a handful of statistical packages on their laptops. ”

“ The cultivation of statistics must be the source of all future improvement in the science of political economy, because it is to the table of the statistician that the economist must look for his facts ”

“ In statistics, it is evident that empirical laws may sometimes be traced; and the tracing them forms an important part of that system of indirect observation on which we must often rely for the data of the Deductive Science. ”

“ Or again; although the different sets of statistics may not as above give almost identical results, yet they may do what practically comes to very much the same thing, that is, arrange themselves into a small number of groups, all of the statistics in any one group practically coinciding in their results. If for example a consumptive man desired to insure his life, there would be a marked difference in the statistics according as we took his peculiar state of health into account or not. ”

“ NO subject of scientific research has within the present century received more earnest attention from thoughtful minds than that of statistics. None, moreover, is more worthy of investigation or fruitful of more satisfactory practical results to humanity. It must be confessed that careless or dishonest observers occasionally misconstrue or misinterpret the significance of statistics ”

“ It is worthy of note, however, that those objections never come from thorough scholars or profound thinkers. Among the majority of mankind, the science of statistics is only beginning to be appreciated ”

“ Ellis, late of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has sought to show by a seemingly powerful array of statistics that the idea now under consideration is unfounded, but I consider that we have here only one more illustration of the familiar statement that you can prove anything you like by statistics. ”

“ Eloquent theorists and brilliant writers on statistics, preferring salient facts and striking phenomena—what they call the great principles of science—too often overlook or despise those obscure movements which act quietly upon the human conscience. ”

“ The treatise of Achenwall, the German philosopher who originated the word, laid the foundation of many of the greatest reforms in modern legislation. Statistics are state facts, facts for the consideration of statesmen, such as they may not neglect with safety. It has been truly said that ‘statistics are history in repose; history is statistics in motion.’ If we neglect the one, we shall deserve to be neglected by the other. ”

“ These last statistics have an interest which does not yet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace reports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of course, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and deaths ”

“ One must not infer from the title that statistics in the scientific meaning of the term is an integral part of sociology, but that sociology, the general science of society needs to make use of statistical laws and conclusions just as it would the generalizations of political economy, of politics or of social ethics, in studying the organic development of society and in formulating a social synthesis. Population is the most important subject matter of statistical science, it is likewise a central fact in sociology. ”